A-1 Limousine Takes to the Open Road with CA's OpenIngres; Selection of CA's RDBMS Technology Follows Extensive Evaluation Of Oracle, Informix And Sybase.

ISLANDIA, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 3, 1997--Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA) today announced that A-1 Limousine, the fourth largest limousine transportation company in the United States, has selected CA's OpenIngres to be the centerpiece of its reservation, dispatch, and sales support automation systems. OpenIngres was chosen over offerings from Oracle, Sybase, and Informix following a grueling competitive performance test lasting nearly two months.

Chen Kao Pu, the Systems Project Manager for A-1 Limousine who supervised all testing, stated, "By the end of our testing, we were convinced that OpenIngres could do the job more reliably and faster in most cases than Informix." Oracle and Sybase were excluded early in the evaluation.

The selection of OpenIngres followed four months of active involvement by CA in A-1 Limousine's efforts to define its business automation objectives. The company, formerly an Informix RDBMS user, converted to a flat file database engine in 1991, but the database had become large and cumbersome. The expense of managing the database was compounded by the growing costs for missed pickups and customer refunds that were the direct result of database errors.

CA worked with A-1 Limousine to define requirements that would both address current needs and future business growth. A-1 Limousine was already planning to facilitate reservations via the Internet and was exploring technologies for placing remote access devices with sales persons and limousine drivers to streamline service booking and delivery. A-1 determined that a solid, reliable relational database management system was a prerequisite for realizing its objectives.

A-1 Limousine had already invested in the development of a nationwide limousine transportation reservation system -- comparable to airline reservation systems -- using technology from Oracle. Oracle was invited to propose a solution for A-1 Limousine's internal requirements. Invitations were also extended to Sybase and Informix.

"Oracle was hard to work with," said Pu. "There was a week's delay in their response to any problems we reported. Sybase didn't respond at all. We needed some character-based interfaces and they only offered graphical user interfaces. Informix lacked product demonstrators and took too long in responding to requests for additional information."

The Informix and the OpenIngres offerings met all prerequisites to enable them to participate in competitive testing by November 1996. In three weeks, the CA team modeled queries against the existing A-1 Limousine database, then converted the data to the OpenIngres RDBMS models.

From November to mid-December, the OpenIngres and Informix products ran in parallel, processing queries according to a predefined test script. Pu collected response statistics and resource characteristics, finding that the OpenIngres solution provided 30 percent to 50 percent better response times than its competitor. The OpenIngres solution was faster, more accurate and more flexible than the legacy database solution.

Ease of management was an absolute requirement for the lean IS organization at A-1. Pu found CA's database management tools to be very robust, and was surprised to learn that Informix required a third-party product for some maintenance functions.

The Informix solution also lacked the ease-of-use of OpenIngres in its fourth generation language application and object development tools. The OpenIngres solution included VisionPro for 4GL character-based application development, CA-OpenROAD for object-based application development and deployment, and Andyne GQL, from CA Business Partner Andyne Computing (Kingston, Ontario, Canada) for decision support application development.

OpenIngres Wins Hands Down

With the best overall scores in the competitive analysis, the OpenIngres solution got the nod from A-1 Limousine. The delivered solution included application development tools required to connect A-1 Limousine's fourteen reservation agents, fourteen dispatchers, three sales persons, senior management and, ultimately, 250 limousines to the central database. Also delivered was OpenIngres for AIX, to be installed on A-1 Limousine's IBM RS/6000 database server, and OpenIngres/Star, providing the technology to manage and communicate interactively with multiple systems and remote offices.

Pu says that he is extremely pleased with the choice of OpenIngres, "We are in the learning stages now and the response time for support on the solution has been superb."

The flexibility of the OpenIngres platform is already making a difference and opening new roads for A-1 Limousines to explore. Using OpenIngres, Pu plans to have mobile data terminals interfaced to the reservation system installed in limousines next year. Within the same timeframe, he looks forward to automating reservations for A-1 Limousine services via the WorldWide Web.

In the near term, he plans two more technology acquisitions -- a fleet management system and an accounting system -- that can be interfaced to the OpenIngres platform to provide seamless, end-to-end integration of all key business processes.

A-1 Limousines is a full-service limousine transportation company based in Princeton, NJ. The company offers a fleet of 250 vehicles, including stretch limousines, limousines, sedans and vans, to support individual, small party and larger group transportation requirements throughout the New Jersey, New York and Connecticut Areas. Reservations can be made via the World Wide Web using the A-1 Limousine homepage at www.a1limo.com or by calling the company toll free at 800-546-6455.

Computer Associates International, Inc. (NYSE: CA), with headquarters in Islandia, N.Y., is the world leader in mission-critical business software. The company develops, licenses and supports more than 500 integrated products that include enterprise computing and information management, application development, manufacturing and financial applications. CA has over 9,000 people in 130 offices in 40 countries and had revenue of $3.9 billion in calendar year 1996. CA can be reached by visiting http://www.cai.com on the World Wide Web, emailing [e-mail] or calling 516/342-5224. -0-

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CONTACT: Computer Associates International, Inc.

Bob Gordon, 516/342-2391

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